Over a period of eight years, from 1904 through 1912, Theodore Long of New Bloomfield in Perry County, wrote a series of letters to William Carson Long, during the time his son was at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and later while he was at North Yakima, Washington, engaged in learning the lumber business with the Cascade Lumber Company.

Theodore Long shared memories of his life growing up in Perry County. Those letters were put into book form in 1939. Life in Pfoutz Valley, the country school, homemade shoes, sleigh riding, and Christmas and the Belsnickel, are just a few of the letters contained in the book.  

In this story, Long described making apple cider and apple butter on the farm.

“To me, one of the greatest delights of the farm was the gathering of apples and the making of cider for apple butter. When the apples were to be gathered, the big farm wagon, the box of which held about fifty bushels, was drawn into the orchard and we would gather apples from the trees until the wagon box was filled. Next day, we would start early for a cider mill. There were three in the valley. They were huge, cumbersome affairs. The mill was run by horsepower. The apples were tumbled into a huge hopper and came through the mill crushed into pomace. The pomace was then carried to the press, which was an immense affair, and was so arranged that the pomace was held in place by temporary containers made of rye straw, arranged one above the other in two or three layers.

“After the pomace was in place, the press, which consisted of a heavy beam, made of the entire bole of a large tree, and was weighted down with stones, was gradually let down on the rye straw containers by an enormous wood screw that moved the beam up and down; after the beam came down, the cider would run out through the straw into a tub or vat that held about a barrel and from this tub it was transferred into the barrels that had been prepared to receive it. After the’ pomace had been run through the press, it was taken back and run through the mill a second time, after being saturated with water, and then put through the press again. This second run was known as water cider, from which vinegar was made. The yield from a wagon load of apples was usually about two and a half barrels of cider and about a barrel and a half of water cider. The work of making cider took a full day and often we would go back to the press the following day and get the last run of the water cider.

“ After the cider was made and in barrels, came the making of the apple butter. This was made in a very large copper kettle that held about a barrel. About five o'clock in the morning of apple - butter boiling - day, the kettle was hung in the open on a chain that reached to a crossbar above and was filled with cider. Fire was set under the kettle and the boiling began. Fire had to be kept up all day so that the cider would continue to boil without cessation, and as the cider would boil down, fresh cider was added till a barrel and a half, or more, had been used.

“When the cider was boiled down to a certain consistency, a bushel or more of apples were dumped into the kettle and the entire mass was again boiled until the butter reached a proper consistency and was pronounced finished. Ofttimes, a seasoning, such as the bark of sassafras root, was added to flavor the butter.

“The apples that were put into the kettle were all pared, quartered and cored, and the work of paring, quartering and coring had to be done the same day so that the apples would be fresh. This entailed a lot of extra work. To facilitate the work of paring the apples, a paring machine was used, and it generally fell to me to run this machine. This, to me, was very agreeable work. But what I disliked most was the stirring of the contents of the kettle after they began to thicken. This stirring had to be kept up continuously from the time the butter began to thicken till it was finished. Any let up in the stirring, even for a short time, would cause the contents of the kettle to settle on the bottom and burn and thus spoil the flavor of the whole kettle.

“The stirring was accomplished by a paddle about five inches wide and a little longer than the depth of the kettle, and fastened at a right angle to a handle about seven feet long; so that one could keep the paddle moving round and round in the kettle without standing close to the fire. This stirring was kept up incessantly until about six o’clock in the evening or later, when the butter was pronounced finished, and the kettle was lowered from its support and its contents dipped out with a copper dipper into the rows of crocks in waiting for that purpose. The making of the apple butter took a full day from about 4.30 or 5.00 o'clock A. M. till about 8.00 o‘clock P. M., when the crocks were all put away. The next day, the big copper kettle had to be scraped and cleaned. This usually took the better part of a half day and was a very tedious job, mother always insisting that the inside of the kettle had to be scoured till it showed the bright polish of copper all over.

“Later in the season we would gather the winter apples. In gathering the apples to make cider, the trees selected for this purpose were shaken, and scutched so that the apples fell off to the ground and were then gathered and put into the wagon for the cider mill. But in gathering the winter apples, much greater care had to be exercised. The apples were carefully picked by hand from the trees and dropped into a sack which was fastened about the neck of the picker. It was necessary to gather the apples so as not to bruise them in any manner, for the slightest bruise meant the beginning of a rotten spot which would eventually envelop the whole apple.

“After the apples were picked they were placed in a large bin in the open, with a roof to keep out the rain, and were left in the bin till after frosty weather in the late fall, when some of them were wrapped in paper and put in barrels, and others were carried into the garden, placed on a bed of rye straw and covered with rye straw, and over the straw was shoveled a covering of about a foot and a half of earth. Here the apples would keep fresh and crisp all winter long. It was a great delight when the snow lay deep all over the landscape, to go to the garden and make a hole into the apple cache just large enough to insert your hand and draw out, one by one, a basketful of fine, fresh apples. We usually put away for our own use in the cache and in barrels about seventy—five bushels of apples. A plentiful supply of vegetables was usually buried in the garden in the same manner as the apples.”

Although not mentioned in Theodore Long’s story, farmers also made applejack or apple whiskey. A lot of Pennsylvania farms either had distilleries or knew someone who did.